I regularly get asked about how networking works under Virtual PC and Virtual Server - so today I will attempt to provide generic overview of how virtual networking works. Each virtual machine is created with one emulated network adapter by default (and...

Well it is time for Ben’s Friday walk down memory lane. Diablo was one heck of a game – and stole a heck of a lot of my time. At the time of its release there were a lot of ‘hard core’ role players who complained about the fact that Diablo wasn’t a true...

Well we have come to the final entry in the 'SimCity' series. You might be surprised to know the SimCity 4 runs under Virtual PC - I know I was. Despite the fact that SimCity 4 states that it has a minimum requirement of a DirectX 7.1 3D capable card...

A regular question I hear is "How can I stop Virtual PC from storing all of my virtual machines in the 'My Virtual Machines' folder in 'My Documents'?". The answer is simple - but obscure. To change this you need to create a system environment variable...

Compared to the original SimCity - SimCity 2000 is a fantastic leap forward in game play - adding several new elements (like subways, bus stations, light and dense zoning and much much more). SimCity 2000 is an incredibly addictive game that I have personally...

Every now and then a user will report seeing an unrecoverable processor error under Virtual PC - and wonder what the heck is going on and what it means. Virtual PC will display this error message when one of two events happen:
When something happened...

A while ago I posted about using Virtual PC in order to run Dark Forces under Windows XP ( http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2004/11/27/270927.aspx ) – which got me to wondering whether its much more successful sequel ‘Jedi Knight: Dark Forces...

A number of users have reported problems using the 'net use' command under Windows 98 under Virtual PC. This appears to be a bad interaction between Windows file sharing and the Virtual Machine Additions folder sharing client. There are two easy ways...

SimCity 3000 continues to build on the success of the previous SimCity releases - with the same old strategy. Take the base game, add more complexity, add more options, add more realism and modeling - and I have to say, it rocks! The only downside of...

One of the biggest challenges with automating virtual machines today is being able to detect that a virtual machine is at a specific place in execution (like waiting at the Windows login screen). A highly effective way to do this is to do a comparison...

If you are using the Virtual Server 2005 SP1 Beta (details here: http://blogs.technet.com/megand/archive/2005/04/20/403950.aspx ) one of the new additions is a F6 driver floppy. This is located under the Virtual Server installation directory “Virtual...

A while ago I told you about using the non-integrated mouse feature under Virtual PC (here http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/03/14/395625.aspx ). Now it turns out that there is no easy way for a user to turn this feature on or off under...

And now we know one of the reasons why Ben is in 'Vegas. This years Microsoft Management Summit saw the arrival of some significant announcements around Microsoft's plans for virtualization. To summarize:
In the short term, Microsoft is responding...

If you want to perform any significant amount of virtual machine automation with Virtual Server – you will need to figure out how to drive the keyboard. There are a number of possible methods for doing this – and each one has its advantages:
VM.keyboard...

Wow - that is a wordy title - but after much waiting the Microsoft Virtual Server Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 was released today. For those of you who do not know - Microsoft Operations Manager (also known as 'MOM') is a very...

One of the biggest complaints that we have heard from customers is that the support policy for Virtual Server was not very clear. The main cause of this lack of clarity has been that it has been up to each Windows Server System team to decide and communicate...

I'm feeling lazy today (fighting off a bit of a cold) - so for today's post I am telling people to go off and check out my interview on Channel9 - at: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=56723
Cheers, Ben

Hi All,
Sorry about the lack of posts - but I am currently in Las Vegas - for the Microsoft Management Summit. Tomorrow I am going to be presenting on 'Developing on Virtual Server' and 'Best Practices for Deploying Virtual Server' - and hope to have...